Seismology at school in Nepal education and crowdsourcing

Nepal lies in the heart of the most active continental seismic zone, the Himalaya. Due to the collision of India and Eurasia, a large number of earthquakes occur in this area. Nepal has experienced devastating earthquakes throughout history, claiming lives and causing significant damage.

The 2015 Gorkha earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people and injured nearly 22,000. It was the worst natural disaster to strike Nepal since the 1934 earthquake. Still, these casualties and damage were far under the expectations. After the Gorkha earthquake, Nepali people are thirsty to know more about earthquakes and vividly seek safety. Proper education reaching a wide group of the population early in their life is strongly needed. The school is the best platform to transfer the required knowledge to society. Beyond teaching adapted classes, we aim for “learning-by-doing” using low-cost seismometers in schools. These intensity-meters will record during the earthquakes, and the students can evaluate the shaking. A network of such devices will allow efficient crowdsourcing of shaking data in an area. This will feed a public dataset that is of high value for scientists to study local and regional particularities. We aim to start this scheme in one region, and then seek that the example is spread to other regions. Our ultimate goal is better preparedness to and the better understanding of earthquakes.